Publishers Weekly
Mexican screenwriter Arriaga (Amores Perros; 21 Grams) constructs a humid, schematic novel-his first published in the U.S.-and maneuvers his characters in a duplicitous web of betrayal and insanity. Narrator Manuel, a university student in Mexico City, mourns the suicide of his best friend, Gregorio, whose girlfriend Tania he's been having an affair with for two years. (Manuel is also having recreational sex with Gregorio's sister, Margarita.) But after Gregorio's slow, fatal descent into madness, his death brings no closure for his guilty friends. Instead, Manuel still fears malice from Gregorio, who leaves him a box of papers "impregnated with vengeance" and torments him with "insane, exact triangulations" by proxy, through a friend of Gregorio from the mental institution. Manuel's behavior grows increasingly erratic and belligerent, while the women in the novel remain inscrutable and reactive ciphers: smooth, desirable bodies; objects of love or lust; excuses the young men use for rage or passion. Arriaga's ominous vision is total-perhaps better material for an atmospheric, tightly structured film than for this unsubtle, claustrophobic novel. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Having made a blood pact (represented by a buffalo tattoo) with best friend Gregorio, Manuel has a difficult time coming to grips when Gregorio blows his brains out. In addition, Manuel and Gregorio shared the same girlfriend, the constantly disappearing Tania, who feels she has betrayed the memory of Gregorio by intensifying her relationship with Manuel. When an angry Manuel shoots a jaguar at the zoo, Tania betrays him, too, by turning him in to the authorities. This work reveals Arriaga's award-winning screenplay background (it is apparently under production in his native Mexico); the text reads like a movie script, heavy on dialog and a tightly constructed plot. Nevertheless, it is neither meaningful nor particularly original; the characters play out a typical m nage trois scenario with all the associated guilt. Neither the shadow of Gregorio controlling their lives nor Manuel's fear of sliding into insanity as Gregorio did has conviction. As dysfunctional and unlikable as they are, the characters are fairly well delineated. The translation is so fluid that it doesn't even read like one; it is unfortunate that the translator is not given credit. For larger public libraries only.-Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Though Arriaga has impressed with his provocative screenplays, the first novel published in the U.S. by the Mexican writer falls flat on the page. Many of the themes here of blood, betrayal, loyalty and man's animal instincts will be familiar to fans of 21 Grams and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, both scripted by Arriaga. Even so, this novel follows a strong set-up with minimal payoff. At the core of the plot is a romantic triangle. Most of what's significant reveals itself in the first few pages. Narrator Manuel feels guilt toward his best friend, Gregorio, who has recently been released from a mental institution after showing some severely self-destructive tendencies. Gregorio appears willing to reconcile with Manuel, who had slept with (and remains very much in love with) Gregorio's girlfriend, Tania. Now in their early 20s, all three had been close friends at least since their early teens, until Tania chose Gregorio as her boyfriend and Manuel as her secret lover. Manuel has also slept with Gregorio's sister and has an uneasy relationship with his younger brother. On page three, Gregorio commits suicide, leaving the characters with the rest of the novel to resolve their various issues of guilt, love and lust. Nothing ever really gets resolved, though Gregorio and his hallucination, the titular "Night Buffalo," remain omnipresent in the mind of Manuel, in particular. As for Tania, it's hard to know exactly what she's thinking, whether her love and allegiance lie with the living or the dead. The combination of existential navel-gazing and south-of-the-border bloodlust (like a Mexican melange of Albert Camus and Cormac McCarthy) wears thin over a couple hundred pages withminimal narrative momentum. The resolution offers too little, too late. A flashback-heavy movie concerning the obsessed mind of Manuel and his memories of Gregorio and Tania might make for a more compelling experience than this curiously inert novel.
